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Monday, January 9, 2017

One-State Solution Re-emerging in Israel

Former Palestinian legislator Mustafa Barghouti, in an interview for the Los Angeles Times, observed: “If the two-state solution is physically unattainable, we have only one op-tion: A struggle to gain full and equal democratic rights in one state, in the land of historic Palestine.”

That one state to which Barghouti refers must be the State of Israel.

Many Israeli’s and Palestinians are cognizant of the fact that the clock cannot be turned back in Israel to accommodate a so-called two-state solution given that 328,423 Israeli Jews resided in the West Bank according to a 2011 census and that this figure is much larg-er today. The Jewish population in the region is rapidly growing while the Palestinian pop-ulation is in steady decline.

Palestinians should be offered full and equal democratic rights, as called for by Barghouti and by a growing number of Palestinians, as citizens of the Jewish State. The new citizens should be offered the voluntary opportunity to participate in state sponsored education as preparation for and their oath of allegiance to the state. Those who are not interested in citizenship should be expected to remain law-abiding and they ought to consider voluntary emigration. By this means Palestinians would become full participants in the fabric of Is-raeli life. The Jewish State is multi-ethnic and multi-religious and would remain so.

Both Palestinian Arabs and Jews have been competing fiercely and at times brutally for Is-rael for over a century. The struggle has gone on for millennia if antiquity is factored into the equation. There is a growing consensus within both parties that Israel has won.The Arabs control vast and in many cases oil rich sovereign states that stretch from the At-lantic seaboard to the Persian Gulf. Many of these Arab states tacitly recognize that they would benefit greatly by aligning themselves with Israel as they struggle to develop modern democratic and advanced Arab and Muslim societies. Palestinians have the option of real-izing all the benefits of sovereignty in any one of these nations. There is only one Jewish State and that state exists within modest and proper borders.

A Jewish State which recognized the rights of its non-Jewish minority and which preserves the holy sites of Islam and Christianity was the vision of both the modern Zionists and en-lightened Arab leaders such as Faisal ibn Hussein, King of Syria and Iraq and King Abdal-lah of Jordan. Indeed, the Koran recognizes the sovereignty of the Jews in Israel as the prelude to messianic times, a vision that Islam shares with both Judaism and Christianity. The fulfillment of that enlightened vision would benefit and bless all the nations and peo-ples of the region.

Chuck Morse is an author and radio talk show host. Chuck received the 2003 Communicator of the Year award from the National Right to Work Committee and was named a "Heavy 100" Radio Talk Host by Talkers Magazine. Chuck ran for Congress in Massachusetts against Barney Frank. For more of his reports — Click Here Now.